"project censored," media literacy, and information dissemination in democratic societies

by a.e.cruse


For a society to by truly democratic, those comprising that society must have access to relevant, credible information so that they may make knowledgeable decisions regarding the political officials they elect, the products they buy, and virtually every other choice presented to them. A free press is guaranteed under the First Amendment, yet the corporatist agenda of the mainstream media has eroded both the framework of investigative journalism, and society’s collective ability to criticize the institutions from which information is disseminated.
Project Censored (founded in 1976 by Dr. Carl Jensen, a Communications professor at Sonoma State University) is a media research group dedicated to publicizing these fundamental problems in media, in addition to uncovering news stories that were either diligently ignored or simply omitted through sheer negligence by various media outlets. Their independent team of Sonoma State faculty and students, as well as members of the community, research relevant and impactful news events to determine the top 25 stories that did not make mainstream news headlines.
The term "censored," defined by Project Censored editor Peter Phillips as "any interference with the free flow of information in society," applies to any story which underwent editing in full or in part, for myriad reasons: to curry favor with the network’s or publication’s stockholders; to appease advertisers whose products are featured in commercials; to conform with the ideological "slant" of the network or publication itself.
In the documentary film "Project Censored: Is the Press Really Free?" Phillips illuminates this idea of censorship, stating, "We don't see it as a conspiracy, as something the media is deliberately doing to keep the American public from being informed about certain stories. It's much more complex than that." These complexities resonate within the societal sphere: people become acculturated to the brand of news they are given, which in effect perpetuates the cyclical nature of censorship and propaganda.
"Media bias," then, is the act of covering a news article in such a way so that it is concordant with the status quo—for example, the Associated Press’ bias on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Alison Weir, Joy Ellison, and Peter Weir, members of the organization "If Americans Knew," statistically analyzed the AP newswire for 2004 and concluded that the coverage allotted to Israeli deaths far exceeded the amount of reports on Palestinian deaths. In addition to disproportionate coverage of these deaths, the number of Israeli casualties in 2004 was slightly augmented (141 reported, 108 actual deaths) whereas Palestinian casualties were undercounted (543 reported, 821actual deaths.) This pro-Israel bias stands as but one example of public opinion being shaped in the American government’s favor.
Media bias also affects which stories get eschewed in the wake of more entertaining, irrelevant "news" pieces, designed to garner ratings and titillate the viewer. These types of immaterial "filler" stories have a strong mainstream appeal because they rely on sensationalism and the voyeuristic nature of the human psyche in order to yield a profit, but ultimately "leave the viewer very empty." Media conglomerates then determine the profitability of any given news article or television news segment--and cover them accordingly, if at all. The result is a culture of sound bites, or compacted, biased rhetoric from TV networks’ leading pundits, who lack the ability to critically analyze the information that they themselves provide.
One major facilitator of journalistic apathy was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, deemed by then-President Bill Clinton as a means to "stimulate investment, promote competition, provide open access for all citizens to the Information Superhighway." In reality, this limited competition by allowing five rather incestuous media conglomerations [GE (NBC), Disney (ABC), News Corp (FOX), Time/Warner (CNN), and Viacom/Westinghouse (CBS)] to dominate the market.
According to Robert McChesney, the "deregulation" label that is often applied to the post-1996 structure of media ownership is a misnomer. By framing this issue in terms of "regulation" and "deregulation," (a logical fallacy in and of itself: the "false dilemma") the argument becomes more potent ideologically and propagandistically. Clinton euphemized the shift in media ownership with the invocation of one beloved tenet of capitalism: the "free market system." Yet to describe the Federal Communications Commission as a laissez-faire operation would be completely inaccurate: the general public must observe broadcast licensing laws, despite the fact that the airwaves fail to establish a "common narrative" that broadcasts "publicly determined values." However, states McChesney, "in theory, and in law, the FCC merely implements the will of Congress. It should be the job of Congress to force the FCC to act in the public interest, and prevent cronyism and corruption. In practice, Congress has done almost the opposite."
Journalists should also act in the public interest, particularly when investigating a politically sensitive situation, by reporting on the story in a complete and accurate manner. "Self-censorship" occurs when a journalist resists this impulse to avoid endangering his or her career. The nation’s journalistic climate has suffered a "chilling effect" in which many reporters hesitate to uncover potentially unpopular (and thusly, career-damaging) news stories due to the negative consequences inflicted upon those who proceeded to cover controversial topics. One example of this is the late reporter Gary Webb, who found that the Mercury News retracted their initial support of his three-part "Dark Alliance" series once other mainstream newspapers began attacking it. Webb’s series documented the relationship between the CIA-backed Contras and the Nicaraguans; namely, that the latter group was trafficking crack-cocaine into Los Angeles and channeling the profits to the Contras. This lambasted the Reagan administration, and Webb’s journalism career did not recover from the resulting ostracism.
The philosopher, linguist, and political activist Noam Chomsky has developed several theories detailing how private power and ideological institutions disadvantage reporters such as Webb, in addition to the democratic discourse that reporters struggle to maintain.
In Engineering Opinion, Noam Chomsky cited the majority of Americans’ innate pacifism as the reason for their initial resistance to violent foreign affairs. Therefore it is the responsibility of their government to "engineer opinion" through the use of propaganda so that the impoverished, marginalized, fearful classes can execute the imperialistic goals of their country’s elite: their government. Chomsky states, "…it’s necessary to have a proper appreciation of the martial virtues and none of these sickly inhibitions about using violence"; the origin of the phrase "sickly inhibitions" lies with Norman Podhoretz, a "Reaganite intellectual."
Necessary Illusions is similar to "Engineering Opinion" in that it pertains to meliorating the general public through the use of propaganda. Necessary Illusions shows how democracy is rendered ineffective when obscured by political propaganda, because people are preoccupied with these "red herrings," as opposed to relevant issues.
Manufacturing Consent, written by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in 1988, begins by stating that individuals must be inculcated with the value system of a larger society. It is the burden of the mass media to communicate this system, and all the symbology within it, to the rest of society. Yet in America, there exists such an imbalance of wealth, property, and resources, that those comprising the lower classes are bombarded with mechanisms of control: the propaganda of this monopolistic "media" class.
Power in our society is concentrated within a network of major corporations, conglomerates, and investment firms, who largely dictate how resources are used. Ben Bagdikian was quoted in Manufacturing Consent as saying that these "constitute a new Private Ministry of Information and Culture that can set the national agenda." Private media and formal censorship serve the ends of this elite class—who views the consumers of this media as a "product" that can be "sold" to advertisers and other businesses.
This success of this exchange is largely contingent upon the success of the Propaganda Model and its five filters: Ownership, Funding, Sourcing, Flak, and Anti-Ideologies/Substitutes for Anti-Communism.
The "Ownership" filter states that the high cost of newspaper production equipment has set financial limits upon who can own a newspaper. Because of this, all information marshaled down to the public by the mainstream media edits its content to comply with the ethics, or to create a satisfactory "PR" image, of its conglomerate owner. Therefore, any information that could harm their extraneous financial interests engenders censorship. An example of this is the legal pressure applied to Fox News by Monsanto when two Fox reporters researched the negative side effects of Bovine Growth Hormone and planned to publicize their findings. Fox quickly withdrew their plans to broadcast the research, and the two reporters were later fired after one attempted to report the misconduct to the FCC.
"Funding" generally applies to the more privileged sect of a publication’s readership who have the disposable income to buy what is presented to them; Chomsky and Herman also argue that the newspaper is merely a vessel that will ideally be presented as conducive to one’s "buying mood." Stories are generally not placed in close proximity to ads that display conflicting values (an example of this would be The San Francisco Chronicle printing coverage of a Macy’s "fur boycott" two pages from their weekly full-length Macy’s advertisement.)
The third filter, "Sourcing" analyzes the partnership and reciprocity that occurs between the media and the government. As an industrialized society, we have an insatiable need for global news, and our media has become largely dependent upon the privileged access and "news-friendly" press releases granted by The Pentagon as insight into domestic and foreign affairs. Reporters then fail to critically examine the information. Recent evidence of this symbiotic relationship being taken to the extreme: commentator/pundit Armstrong Williams, who received $241,000 from The Department of Education to generate favorable press for Bush’s "No Child Left Behind" law in 2005.
"Flak" is the process of discreditation and marginalization enacted by the mainstream press when an organization presents a viewpoint contrary to "The Establishment." Propaganda conditions the society at large to reflexively accept the status quo; therefore deviations from it are easily obfuscated. Mainstream media can also experience Flak, however; advertising agencies, stockholders, or sponsors can threaten to halt their financial support in response to a statement made by a representative of that network. In April of this year, CBS fired Don Imus from his WFAN radio program in reaction to a racial slur made by the broadcaster, after various women’s and civil rights groups condemned him and the network. CBS would not have taken drastic action against Imus—host of a popular radio show—had the comment gone unnoticed. But, the ensuing Flak damaged CBS’ image, and his firing was a PR attempt to regain credibility with the masses. The inflammatory remark was not an isolated event, according to the "Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting" (FAIR) group, and others.
The final filter "Anti-Ideology" was used to great effect during the "Red Scare" of the 1950s, when a national ideology emerged against all other political structures that could harm democracy. Ironically, this propaganda distorts the reality of a "communist threat"—much like the "terrorist threat" of the 2000s—and fosters a culture of fear. In such an environment, emotive, not cognitive, reasoning sways the general population; this is far more detrimental to a "free, democratic" society than any supposed threat of communist tyranny or a "mushroom cloud."
Propaganda is not only used to instill fear. The "comprehensive foreign policy strategy" of Karen Hughes, The Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, is neither comprehensive nor a strategy. Hughes strings together highly-euphemized, politically-correct ideological buzzwords, but fails to offer realistic or pragmatic means of achieving "a positive vision of hope." Hughes’ failure to create a historical narrative or contextualize her argument supports Chomsky and Herman’s theory of mainstream media creating the value system of a culture as a means to subjugate the remainder of the population. An excerpt from Michael Parenti’s definition of "Framing," a media distortion tool, echoes this sentiment: "Their job is not to inform but disinform, not to advance democratic discourse but to dilute and mute it. Their task is to give every appearance of being conscientiously concerned about events of the day, saying so much while meaning so little."